Not for: Won't work on manual-focus cameras. It's foolish to use this on a DX or 1.6x Canon camera; for them, the Tokina 11-16mm — or even a kit lens — is a much smarter idea.

Good: Very low distortion: half the distortion of any other zoom even at triple the price. As sharp as Nikon's professional 17-35mm f/2.8 AF-S, in a smaller, lighter and less expensive package. Also much smaller than Nikon's 16-35mm VR.

This Tokina lens has much less distortion than any other ultrawide zoom, regardless of price. Unlike any other ultrawide zoom, this Tokina's distortion is invisible at almost every setting. Nikon and Canon's best pro ultrawide zooms have double this distortion!

Considering that this Tokina 17-35mm is smaller and lighter than either of the Nikon lenses, and costs half as much, it's easy to recommend it for all full-frame film and digital cameras.

Everything should work perfectly on every digital Nikon, both FX and DX, and even on Nikon's cheapest digitals like the D40, D40x, D60, D3000, D3100 or D5000.

It also should be perfect on decent or recent AF film cameras like the F6, F100, F5, N80 and N75.

The incompatibilities for older or cheaper film cameras are that:

1.) It won't autofocus with the cheapest new AF 35mm cameras like the N55, but if you focus manually, everything else should work great. Even if you lose autofocus, these cameras have in-finder focus confirmation dots to help you.

2.) Late 1980s ~ early 1990s AF cameras like the N90s, N70 and F4 should autofocus just fine, but you'll lose Manual and Aperture-priority since you have no way to set the aperture on the camera or on the lens.

3.) You're really pushing it with the oldest AF cameras like the N2020, N6006 and N8008. You'll have no AF, and confused exposure modes. Manual focus is fine, with electronic focus indications.

4.) Since it has no aperture ring, it's just about useless with manual focus film cameras. It will shoot every shot at its minimum aperture.

See Nikon Lens Compatibility for details with your camera. Read down the "AF-S, AF-I," and "G" columns for this lens. You'll get the least of all the features displayed in all columns, since "G" (gelding) is a deliberate handicap which removes features.

Warning: as a non-Nikon and non-Canon lens, there is never any guarantee that this Tokina lens will always work perfectly with every possible camera. I've only used it on the Nikon D3 and D7000. There is always the potential for it not to work on some models of camera, today or newer models in the future. This is the chance you take with non-Nikon or non-Canon lenses.

For more critical use, plug these figures into Photoshop's
lens distortion filter. These aren't facts or specifications, they are the results of my research that requires hours of photography and calculations on the resulting data.

Of interest mostly to cinematographers focusing back and forth between two subjects, for instance, a couple having a conversation, the image from the Tokina 17-35/4 gets slightly smaller as focused more closely.

This Tokina is blurrier in the corners of FX at 17mm at f/4, just like Nikon's 17-35mm. Both these lenses get sharper in the corners as stopped down, and are sharp at 17mm throughout most of the image, even at f/4.

At 24mm, this Tokina lens is sharp corner-to-corner on FX even at f/4, which is better than the Nikon 17-35mm.

At 35mm, this Tokina is slightly softer at f/4 throughout the frame, and super-sharp from f/5.6 on.

As I've said before, this Tokina is the smallest and lightest current ultrawide full-frame zoom, it's as sharp as most other professional ultrawide zooms, and has the lowest distortion of any of them at any price.

If I had to find something it can't do as well as one other lens, the Nikon 16-35mm VR is sharper and does have VR, but the 16-35 VR has much more distortion.

This Tokina 17-35mm f/4 FX is a great choice if you don't want to buy — or to carry — Nikon's superior (but not professional) 16-35 VR. The 16-35 VR is sharper and adds VR, which makes it my personal choice, even if it has a lot more easy-to-correct distortion.

Nikon's 18-35 is a sleeper here and I haven't mentioned it except in the comparison table above. It costs less than the Tokina and is about as sharp, but it has a lot more distortion and is built much less tough. It also weighs a lot less than any of the other lenses for Nikon.

Pros still pay $1,770 for Nikon's 17-35/2.8 because it's tough and because it has instant manual-focus override. If you're not shooting it every day for a living, sure, this Tokina is excellent!

Specifically for Canon

With Canon, our choice is easy: Tokina's lens is nice, but since the genuine Canon 17-40 L sells for about the same price, I wouldn't bother with this Tokina for Canon unless its price comes way down – or if you really need the lowest possible distortion.

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